DBT Skills for Couples

DBT Skills for Couples provides couples with skills to more effectively cope with intense emotional patterns that commonly arise in intimate relationships. Each class begins with a mindfulness exercise, followed by each participant's report on practicing the previous week's skills with brief feedback/coaching by the group leader(s). After a short break, new skills are taught and practiced. This is a class format, not a therapy group. The focus is on becoming more skillful, rather than processing the events of the week. Participants tend to be diverse across a range of age, race, gender, therapy experience, and interpersonal styles/levels of struggle. All seek to learn, to become more skillful, and are willing to commit to actively apply the skills from each class, such as:

Understanding Emotion in Relationships

Mindfully Accepting Yourself & Your Partner

How to Stop Making Things Worse

Being More Alive Together

Reactivating Your Relationship

Accurate Expression via Emotion Regulation

What and Why to Validate

How to Validate your Partner

Recovering from Invalidation

Managing Problems/Negotiating Solutions

Transforming Conflict into Closeness

DBT Skills for Couples is based on the work of Alan Fruzzetti and Marsha Linehan. The recommended "text" for the class is The High Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation by Alan Fruzzetti